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The answer came to me as I swapped the garden shears for the butane.
I couldn’t risk the last piece of my parent’s legacy, and I couldn’t give up on my sister. Mateo held the power to destroy both in the palm of his hand.
With this deal, he would essentially own me, too.
I turned the little nozzle on the back of the can and smoothed some stray hairs away from my face with a shaky hand.
Hoping Alex could read the apology in my eyes I pressed down on the trigger and a hissing flame shot out. I started with the E, dragging the flame over the flesh on his left pectoral, slowly to the right, letting go of the trigger and moving down at the same pace before going over again, and then repeating the motion one last time.
Elias relayed what I was doing in the background.
Alex tried to stay quiet, failing on my second downward swipe.
His skin quickly changed from pink to a an angry red as it turned into a heat blister, swollen and pulsing with pus.
He cried out behind his gag, uselessly rocking in the chair in an effort to escape the fire. His pain didn’t faze me. I was fully focused on finishing the R.
The smell was acrid, burning my nose a good bit. There was a hint of rancid almost bacon-like aroma. Not the smoky richness of bacon, more like when the bacon is done, but there's little bits left in the pan turning black and charred from over cooking.
“Next?” I asked as soon as I was done.
“Clean it with the liquor,” Mateo casually replied.
Sitting the can down, I picked up the bottle of vodka and worked off the top. Knowing this was only going to add to Alex’s pain, I purposely didn’t look in his eyes as I let the clear liquid rush from the bottle and onto his chest.
The effect was instantaneous. His raw skin began to sizzle. The freshly formed blisters burst, causing milky pus and blood to stream down his naked torso.
Making the mistake of glancing at his face, I saw tears leaking from his eyes.
“I’m done,” I said, capping the Vodka.
I stepped away, feeling slightly sick with myself. Violence and torture were both key parts of this life, I knew that. I knew this was what Mateo had done multiple times. My father had done countless things of the same degree.
But this was my first time actively participating as anything more than an accidental witness.
“Very good, anjo,” Mateo praised. He said something to someone in the background and then spoke directly to Elias.
“I have to go now. Do exactly as he tells you and I’ll see you soon. I’ll be watching.” With that, the line went dead.
I looked to Elias. “What did he mean, he’ll be watching?”
“In the corners,” he replied, spinning his finger in a circle.
They were nearly impossible to see, but when I squinted and strained my vision, the tiny black ball of a camera was noticeable in all four corners of the room.
“So he just watched all that?”
“Mateo’s always watching, sweetheart. Always.” He plucked the cell back from my hands and gently moved me out of the way, then proceeded to take a picture of Alex’s current predicament.
Thinking over his statement gave me an uncomfortable sense of paranoia.
Elias, oblivious to my mental musings or not caring, began undoing his buttons.
“Wha…what are you doing?”
He gave me an ornery smirk and continued, shrugging out of his shirt.
I received a full frontal view of the cut and toned body beneath. He looked uncannily similar to Mateo, ju
